making visible: infographics book (work in progress)

creating a template for writing and designing infographics as its audience and scope changes. features visual-verbal explorations of how infograph elements may be written and designed—including titles, captions, paragraph text, graphs, diagrams, visual explanations, and pictograms. the book includes original writing and design by me on topics ranging from art and design to math and science—drawn from a wealth of resources.

the pages displayed here explain aerodynamics principles in design and engineering applications. these small, medium, and large scale graphics demonstrate my approach to information design as a humanistic and pedagogical endeavor—across ideation, design, and application stages.

making visible: art and design history pages

this page features visual explanations of two popular cultural icons— the peace sign and the superman symbol. they are both origin stories. the visual explanation of the peace sign involves pictograms designed from scratch. the peace sign page-spread gives a sense of how subtle variations alter the meaning and expression of a pictogram.

next, is a visual analysis of the superman symbol. this infograph is looking at the creative / imaginative processes behind giving plausible explanations for the roman capital S on Superman's chest as a fictional character and a cultural icon. the infograph makes use of visual notations to underscore design alterations and nuances.

making visible: epigenetics pages (sm, m, lg)

the first step in designing a page of making visible is to determine the scope of the visual explanation by probing the domain of knowledge at hand. this page begins with a small scale (sm) infograph that serves as the basis for multiple explanations of the epigenetic process for different audiences. it is an all-text layout, constructed from written placeholders for graphics. the data is complied by a bibliographic study incorporating multiple levels of college textbooks, scientific journal articles, general reference, and popular science books.

while working on specialized topics such as epigenetics or aerodynamics, once the scope of the graphic is in place, i consult research scientists who review the narrative for coherence and edit the content for accuracy.

in the third and fourth images, the small infograph is extended into a page spread with pencil sketches as placeholders. variations of this page will show how to balance image and text; as well as how to change the amount of detail in the graphics.

graphic book (2006) exhibition

John M. Flaxman Library, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

I curated books designed in my experimental book design course. Students devised page architectures that reflected narrative spaces of fiction and non-fiction writing. Several books that were exhibited were acquired by Joan Flasch Artists' book collection and the Newberry Library, Chicago.